A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(86)

He shuffled to the bucket and peed in it. He had no water to wash his hands with this time, and he wouldn’t have wasted it in any case. His throat was parched; his tongue felt swollen. He needed to drink.

A door slammed somewhere in the house. He heard the man muttering to himself. Nathan knew he needed to call the man, ask for water. He took a few stumbling steps to the door and leaned against it, steadying himself.

“I had to. I had to!” the man was saying to himself. His words were slurred. “You asked me to do it. I didn’t want it to happen this way. I never wanted any of this.”

Nathan’s resolve died as he listened to the man stomping around the house, cursing and moaning.

“You bitch! You and your shit of a brother. This wasn’t how I wanted it to happen. I’ll show him! I’ll show him right now.”

The trudging footsteps thumped louder, and Nathan backed away from the door, his heart thudding. The doorknob rattled, the door juddering.

High-pitched laughter. “I forgot it was locked.” Then a moment of silence. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want any of this either. I know that. We’re almost done. Just a few days more. Almost done.”

The voice faded as the man probably stepped away from the door. Nathan collapsed onto his bed, swallowing. Maybe he would ask the man for some water later. Right now wasn’t a good time.

He could wait.





CHAPTER 59


Carver stared at Eric’s body lying on the steel table, the bruises and blemishes on his face and neck accentuated in the sterile white light of the morgue.

“If you need to throw up, use that,” Gomez told him, gesturing at the bin in the corner.

“I won’t need to throw up.”

“I’m just saying, you people were puking on evidence yesterday. If this case goes to trial, I don’t want you to mess up my autopsy report.”

Carver glanced at her. “I’m fine, thanks, Doctor.”

He watched as Gomez and her assistant prepared Eric’s inert body, checking the paperwork as they proceeded. They stripped the body, examining each article of clothing carefully under the UV light.

“Traces of mud on the shirt’s right shoulder,” Gomez said, collecting a few clumps with tweezers and placing them in an evidence bag. “One rough tear on the front of the shirt. That’s the stab wound.”

“Right,” Carver said, staring at Eric’s blood-covered chest.

Gomez measured and photographed the tear in the shirt while the assistant clipped Eric’s nails, placing the clippings in evidence bags. Maybe Eric had managed to scratch his attacker. Carver could sure use a break like that.

Once they finished removing Eric’s clothes, Gomez began examining him as her assistant combed Eric’s hair.

“Take a look at this,” Gomez said, motioning Carver to come closer. She pointed at Eric’s shoulder. “Slight abrasions, but there’s no real bruising. This was done postmortem.”

“He killed him and then stomped on him for good measure,” Carver said. “Must have been angry.”

Gomez shook her head. “The abrasions aren’t extensive. I don’t think he stomped on him. I have a different theory. But I’ll do some x-rays to be sure. Step out of the room for a bit; you don’t need the extra dose of radiation.”

Carver nodded and walked out, grateful to leave the smell of blood and antiseptic fluids behind him. He dialed Ahmed Nader’s phone.

“Hey, Carver,” Ahmed answered almost immediately. “I’m still not done.”

“That’s fine,” Carver said. “I was just checking in to hear what you’ve got so far. Anything at all.”

“Well, I can tell you what we probably don’t have,” Ahmed said. “The murderer’s fingerprints. We have a lot of smudges that indicate the murderer wore gloves. We found a lot of prints at the crime scene, of course, but I’m betting they belong to the victim and his friends. There is one surface in the entire crime scene that was wiped clean.”

“Which was?”

“The victim’s phone.”

Carver thought about it. “The phone touch screen wouldn’t work well with his gloves. So he took a glove off, did something with the phone, and then wiped the screen clean from the fingerprints.”

“Exactly.”

“Any idea what he looked for on the victim’s phone?”

“The phone was reset completely. Factory reset.”

“So there was something on it that he didn’t want us to find. Why not take the phone?”

“Maybe he was worried you’d be able to locate it. Or he didn’t want to call your attention to the fact that the phone was missing. Next we have footprints. We have a few good ones, as you know, because our perp stepped in the victim’s blood. Size twelve.”

“Like the footprint in Liam Washington’s vehicle.”

“Exactly like it. We can’t say if it belongs to the same person because the footprints we have here are from the right foot, and the footprint from the vehicle is the left foot. But we can say that it’s the same boot type, that Hawkwell boot.”

“Okay. What else?”

“Nothing else. I told you, I’m not done.”

“The victim has traces of dried mud on his shoulder. If you get a sample of it, can you compare it to the mud we found from Liam Washington’s crime scene?”